


8th & Wabash

by propinquitous



Series: Map of the Falling Sky [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, Masturbation, Phone Sex, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:07:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitous/pseuds/propinquitous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas tries to temper his first holiday alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	8th & Wabash

To get to the pantry, you don’t enter through the front doors. There is a side door, which opens almost immediately onto stairs that descend half a story into a long hall. Immediately to the left are the nursery and three other rooms where increasingly older children go to daycare, but if you keep going forward you find a big, white room, with grey and white speckled linoleum and long fold-up tables with brown formica tops. This is where Cas has walked, and now he stands. The big room actually has publicly accessible doors, but they open to an alley. Only clients go in that way. Cas doesn’t quite understand why the volunteers and clients have separate entrances, but he thinks it might have something to do with the line forming at the back door. He thinks that he could easily be mistaken for someone needing help.

He ducks his head beneath the frame that leads to the big room and secures his badge as he does so. It’s laminate, thin plastic with a calligraphic _6.8_ watermark and his name, _Steve_ , in serif font across the middle. It makes him anxious to use an alias here, but he thinks that it will keep him safe and those around him safer. He wears an old white polo and jeans. His dark blue sweater leaves lint all over.

“Hi, Steve,” Veronica greets him with a broad wave. She teaches ESL to clients while they wait, basic things, like grocery vocabulary and simple phrases to express want and need. More often she serves as an unofficial translator between clients and the mostly monolingual staff. Cas would like to help her, but she is from Mexico and he doesn’t want to usurp her authority. He thinks that Latin has changed a lot in 2,000 years, anyway.

“Hi, Vero,” he says back, mirroring her wave with a smaller one. “Ready to go?”

“You bet. I’ll be set up over here today, si sirve. I don’t think there’ll be as much waiting today, since we’re not checking for eligibility. Pero si me necesitas, estaré allí.” Cas likes that she speaks Spanish to him even though she doesn’t know that he understands.

“Thank you,” he smiles, nodding as she turns. He returns to the back of the room and looks for someone he recognizes. It takes a moment before he finds Erica, the volunteer coordinator. She is the closest person to Cas’ eye level in the room, which he also likes. He feels small in her presence.

“Where do you need me?”

“You wanna man the stuffing?” she says, handing him a large black spoon made out of plastic.

“I think I can manage.” He smiles, broader this time. The line at the door is let in a few minutes later, and Cas watches it wind down from the front, where people hand out flyers for local boarding homes and pamphlets on counseling and Section 8. When they arrive at his station, he ladles out heaps of stuffing. It smells like rosemary. Erica walks back and forth behind him, ensuring the efficiency of the line and sufficient quantities of plates and forks. Cas rolls up his sleeves after dipping them in gravy twice, and he laughs.

“Hey, Clarence,” one man smiles at him. For a moment Cas is speechless, but then he smiles his best smile, doesn’t even have to think about letting it reach his eyes to make them crinkle. “You seem like you’re doing a hell of a lot better.” He nods.

“Thank you.” Cas pauses, inhales. “I am.”

 

 

He walks up the stairs that lead to his small efficiency above the laundromat. Nora helped him find it, even cosigned for him, and he was happy to have somewhere to call his own. His takeout bag is heavy in his hand and he has to adjust so that for a moment it hangs only on his right pinky. The strain his harsh, but the lock turns quickly and he is able to set it down. The bag on his shoulder slips slowly onto the floor. Cas delivers his leftovers to the fridge which sits around the corner in his small kitchen, and returns to sit on his bed, which is also his couch. For a moment he simply rests. He is thankful for today. He has a home, a place with heat and blankets and warm lighting. The walls are stuccoed to a pleasant texture that Cas enjoys running his palm over when he walks to the bathroom, and the Nag Champa he found at work gives the place a familiar smell. So he sits. He absorbs. His body sinks slowly into the mattress as he thinks about the things he is grateful for. After a few minutes, when his skin is steeped with the musky smell of incense, he bends over his legs and reaches for his bag. His phone is in the front pocket.

“Hey,” Sam’s voice has always been so gentle.

“Hello, Sam,”

“How’re you doing? Thanksgiving treating you okay?”  

“Yes. It’s been very nice.”

“Do anything special?”  

“I helped give food out at the church.” Cas presses the phone between his shoulder and ear so that he can take off his shoes.

“That’s very, that’s very nice of you,” Sam’s voice lacks some steadiness. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, thank you.” He returns he phone to his hand.

“Do you want to talk to Dean?”

  “That would be nice.” Then there is some shuffling, a rustle of static and cotton over the receiver.

“Hey, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.” Dean laughs, and Cas is not sure why.

“What’s funny?” The line goes quiet for a moment. Dean clears his throat.

“Nothing, it’s uh, it’s nothing. Sam said you volunteered today?”

“Yes. A church near my apartment had a Thanksgiving dinner and I wanted to help. Sometimes I work in their food pantry on Saturdays, too.”

“That’s nice of you. Your apartment?” Cas shrugs at no one.

“Nora helped me find one. It’s above the laundromat. What did you do today?”

“Oh, you know. Made some dinner. My turkey came out beautiful, falling off the bone. I stuffed it with apples and it really kept it moist, who’d have thought? My pie crust was also fucking phenomenal. You should’ve seen it. Flaky but not doughy, perfect bite to it. Man.” Cas laughs at Dean’s indulgent sigh and reclines, pressing the phone between his ear and the pillow. He curls in on himself. His hand begins to sweat against the phone.

“I miss you,” Cas’ voice is quiet.

“I miss you, too,” and the way Dean doesn’t miss a beat in his reply makes Cas’ eyes burn. “Wish you could’ve been here to eat some of this damn food.” Dean’s chuckle is quiet, gentle, half-hearted. Cas sees green starbursts behind his eyelids.

 

 

Cas thinks he must have nodded off. He hears Dean’s voice saying his name, insistent and worried.

“You okay?”  

“Yeah, fine,” he says. There’s a treacherous feeling beneath his waist, a tension that pulls at his spine. He reaches between his legs and palms himself. Exhausted, he still whines.

“Miss you,” he says again. Now his phone is pressed between his face and pillow.

“Yeah, uh, miss you too,” Dean coughs. 

"I mean it, Dean. Can I come home soon?” Cas’ voice has reached a high pitch and he rolls onto his stomach. He’s loathe to bring his hand up to his phone, but he has to, and so he presses the right one to plastic. His face is sweaty where the phone touches it. His vision is beginning to tunnel.

“I don’t know, Cas,” Dean says. The phone goes quiet and Cas stops moving his hips. “I want you to.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, of course I promise.” Cas starts moving again. His zipper, the denim are too hard against him and so he reaches, pulls his jeans down, and presses into the mattress. He gasps and it makes his lips dry.

“What are you doing?” Dean’s voice isn’t accusatory but it is suspicious.

“Oh,” is all Cas gets out. He breathes, short and stuttered. His vision is rimmed in soft white. He thinks about slick fingers, reaches his own dry ones back to brush gently against himself.

“Are you?” Cas does and doesn’t know what Dean’s asking. His consciousness is barely holding on him, he’s so tired, he’s been up since five a.m. and now it’s past eleven, and god, he misses Dean, misses the brief and warm touches and fuck, he needs to come.

“Yeah,” his throat is full of reeds.

“Oh,” Dean sounds relieved, “Does it feel good?”  

“Mm,” his dick has caught just an ounce of friction, too rough to be comfortable but he doesn’t care. He has missed Dean all day. He wanted to be there in the bunker, there with Dean who would touch his knee under the table and Sam who would insist he eat more and Kevin, Kevin who would talk with him about chess and then after Dean would bend him over the edge of his, their mattress. The tip of one finger edges in and it hurts. It’s dry and it hurts even though Cas has had much more than this, but it’s too much and too sensitive and Cas is gasping, he’s panting against the pillow, wet underneath his mouth. He forgets the phone pressed against his cheek and isn’t sure when the sole purpose of his hands became spreading his own ass open, pressing inward. He traces, over and over again, the muscle there and craves more, but he can’t articulate it to the man on the other end of the phone.

“Cas?” He can only hum in response. His body won’t let him stop, keeps him rutting against secondhand sheets.

“Please,” Dean gasps, and Cas thinks that his voice sounds wrecked, he _sounds wrecked_ , which is not something Cas has ever understood before. He fucks into the fold of the sheet, thrusting one, two, three, four more times, hands spreading himself open for a man who isn’t there, and he comes, imagining the warmth of Dean spread across his back. He hears Dean’s stammered gasps from a mile away, his phone long displaced.

“Hello,’ he breathes, and he thinks about tucking his face between Dean’s legs. Dean breathes into the phone.

“I promise you can come home soon.” Cas’ eyes sting.

“Goodnight, Dean,” he says as he pulls the sticky phone off of his face. He places it on the nightstand. Suddenly he is wide awake, missing Dean even worse, and he stumbles to the shower. The water is warm over his shoulders, and if nothing else, he is thankful for that.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if this seems a bit incoherent. I want to expand it when I'm not exhausted, but things tend to languish in my drafts folder if I don't get them posted and shamed into working.
> 
> For reference, the 6.8 on his badge refers to Micah 6:8,
> 
> He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.  
> And what does the Lord require of you?  
> To act justly and to love mercy  
> and to walk humbly with your God.
> 
> Thanks to Jamie, as always, for prompting this nonsense.


End file.
